Thank you, Chair.
As I was saying, transcript after transcript of committee meetings have shown that Conservatives don't want to hear the answers. They want to ask the questions. They want to get their clips and move on, but not let the matter move on. They want to move on to their next objective.
My dad says this one thing: “Iqra, don't be somebody who wants to be someone. Be somebody who wants to do something.”
The way the Conservatives are behaving with this bogus privilege motion shows me they are very much in the business of wanting to be something, rather than doing something good for Canadians.
I've seen time and time again how questions are posed to witnesses in this committee without giving them the opportunity to answer the questions and without giving them the opportunity to clarify. It's been said here before: This is not a courtroom. This is a place for, hopefully, distinguished and educational conversation. The fact that we don't have that right now is kind of disturbing.
This privilege motion itself has no water to float on, because of the nature of the questions that have been asked over these past.... I've been on this committee for the past year. The fact of the matter is that, the way questions are posed again and again, witnesses are disrespected again and again. If this were the case, the member opposite would feel that his privilege was violated, because nobody was answering his questions, Well, he's been on this committee for a very long time. He's been on many committees for a very long time. Why has he never brought such a motion forward before?
Is it because the witness is a former minister of the Crown? Is it because the Conservatives are looking for dirt, or whatever it is that they're looking for? I have no idea, to be honest.
This motion was put forward before the Conservatives had all of their time to ask the questions. This motion was put forward while the witness was not able to answer all of the questions. The witness kept getting heckled, and he kept getting cut off with the questions that he was supposed to answer with whatever limited time the Conservatives were going to give him.
As he was trying to answer, he would get cut off after the first couple of words he was trying to get out of his mouth. That is unfortunate, because when we invite witnesses to this committee, we invite them, hopefully, with the intent that we're going to learn something from them. It's not to interrogate them, not to humiliate them and not to move bogus privilege motions based on a political need.
It is a political need right now from the Conservatives. They're just grasping at straws, anything and everything, whatever can stick. It's really unfortunate. Quite frankly, I don't think the other opposition parties have done this debate any favours either. As I was reading through the transcripts, I see that the member from the NDP has a page-long question. You don't get a lot of time to ask your questions.
Obviously, we want to hear what people have to say, rather than indulge our witnesses with soliloquies. However, that is exactly what has happened. That is exactly what I see in our transcripts: elongated paragraphs and broad statements trying to virtue signal all of that. Then, when it comes time for a witness to answer a question, what happens? It's “Oh, no, you didn't answer my question”. Well, buddy, give him some time to answer the question. How about that?